WHERE THE OCCULT & PAGAN COMMUNITY LOST THE PLOT

The occult community is doomed to be hijacked by right-wing nut-jobs and other idiots because it has become paralysed by its own desire to be “spiritual.”

Yesterday I was involved in a spat with a Golden Dawn troll in the Nova Roma group on Facebook. Not the occult Golden Dawn, I mean the Nazi group which has effectively taken over the use of the name in the EU. The troll was flooding he site with bogus historical claims about how the Jews wrecked Greece and how homosexuality in Ancient Greece was a dreadful rumour put about by the Jews where intimated by Greek masculinity. Ignoring him did not help. He kept reposting because he believed he was right.

As I thought the Golden Dawn was anti-Turk (and this was a Roman group) so I made a few gags about how the Romans were Troyian refugees and therefore Turkish. I was wasting my time, the troll had about as much of a sense of humour as his alt.magick counterparts in the 1990s.

The point was that the Nova Roma group seemed unable to do anything about him. If a troll like that appeared in one of my Facebook groups he would have been banned. Scarlet Magdalene reports that similar trolls are the bane of her existence in Greek religious re-enactment groups but no one is taking them down either.

In all cases the neo-pagan movement is ignoring one of the primary lessons that the Jews learnt in the 1940s. The only way to deal with these thugs is to chase them off the streets. In Germany the population was in fear of the brown shirts and the result was that they ended up being accepted. In the UK though Mosley’s Black shirts were literally chased from the streets by gangs of pissed off Jews. The grass roots of the Nazi movement failed. Then, as in now, the Far Right claimed their views are being censored and that you are trespassing on their rights to free speech.

So fucking what!

Rights of free speech are intimately coupled with a right not-to-listen. You have a right to call me name, but in law you cannot control my reaction. So if you insult my ancestors it is not interfering with your free speech if I curse you never to have any off-spring or you get a terminal illness. If you post hate-speech on a Facebook group that is your right, it is equally my right to take you down.

Yet in the occult community there is a fear that people are somehow doing the wrong thing. That they are not appearing spiritual enough in their dealing with these people. If we are all One Thing then surely these people are just as much God as the rest of us. That might be true but a sun and a black hole are part of the same universe, but you would not want them in the same solar system – one is very bad for the other.

My reaction to the Nova Roma troll was to leave the group, because I don’t want to read that shit and I did not want to appear bad taking him on. Occult leaders in particular have this problem. There is a mistaken belief that being spiritual is being tolerant when in fact a closer connection to the flow of the universe makes you less tolerant of those who are closer to the trees and not familiar with their opposable thumbs.

But then I thought fuck it… why should neo-nazis close down occult groups and chase working occultists out of them. Alt.magick in the 1990s was a case in point. When it started it was full of really cool people – Pat Zalewski, Poke Runyon, Adam McLean, Aaron Lietch, different groups, OTO, GD, etc. Then it went to shit because a couple of bullies tried to assert control over it and defamed everyone who did not do their bidding. Since it was impossible for you to kick someone out of alt.magick everyone just left and that level of egalitarianism has not returned in one place again.

Instead of trying to work with these morons, and “being tolerant” it is really time that occultists showed that this sort of behaviour should not be allowed. It is time that real occultists started taking back groups from these backward types in whatever form they manifest. Rather than defending the criminals and their rights to be arseholes, we should be defending ourselves from the contamination that this particular thinking breeds. Rather than providing platforms for Neo-nazi thought, we should be closing it down at its first opportunely before it contaminates Adam Kadmon any further.

In short, you get the sort of community you deserve. If you do not stand up to bullies they will continue to steal your lunch money.

UPDATE

The administrator at Nova Roma has banned two Nazi’s from the group including the one who inspired this blog. Well done guys…..THe admin has also posted that will be the fate of any one who tries to post fascist propaganda in the group. This sort of zero tolerance is exactly the sort of approach we need.

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16 thoughts on “WHERE THE OCCULT & PAGAN COMMUNITY LOST THE PLOT”

Nick – by all means get rid of trolls. In our local moot we did ban a BNP member who we thought was trying to infiltrate pagan group, (we only discovered his membership via wikileaks) – and were cognizant of how far right like to be able to say they have pagan members etc etc.

In general I think we should probably allow more space to discuss the issues, especially with some elements of paganism which have a political bias. I have dome my own little bit to critique right wing interpretations /appropriations of Egyptian gods forms such as Set, and also to show privilege the more Ma’atian interpretations of Crowley’s Liber Al, ie against Nietzsche . I think responding violently should be a last resort really – i prefer to try the battle of ideas first. Mogg Morgan

You do have a valid point there, but how you deal with them from a magical perspective as to be effective, unemotional and not reactive, other wise you get entangled in the whole parasited mess. The way I approach it in groups, is if some moron comes out with this stuff, others and myself will pick holes in the argument in order to open a possible door for discussion and change. If the person (which sadly is most of the time) is a fundamentalist chimp who does not have to capacity to stand back and look objectively, and see other perspectives and understand them, then they are ejected.A lot of extreme right wing reactions stem from ignorance, poverty and fear. But some comes from just sheer nastiness and the wish for power.From a magical perspective, ‘taking them out’, cursing their bloodlines or placing a curse of death upon them makes you no better than them and perpetuates the inner cycle for everyone, not just yourself. You create a new pattern that feeds off the conflict and keeps it going. However, if push comes to dangerous shove, a tidy bit of binding and gagging to prevent them from perpetuating their extreme activities is a more natural and far more effective solution. Just as the body will surround, bind and de activate potential threats within it, and create scar tissue over it, so it also works in magic – the power of Gevurah can go a long way in neutralising something like this without creating a new pattern. Gevurah power will hold the offending person in a grip until they decide to change, or it will just keep holding them there. The choice for change is still in the hands of the person, and that in turn keeps the scales balanced.

“Eurocentricism” – especially utilising implied ‘superiority’ of ancient European cultural history – gets tolerated considerably more in the pagan/occult community than it should. Almost surprising given the obvious liberties frequently taken with historical accuracy and nuance. Also evident is an obvious lack of awareness of how ‘globalised’ even the ancient world was. I continue to see subrosa (and not so) prejudice against Muslims, Asians & Africans on lists ‘in round about ways’ that is based on quite an anti-intellectual foundation – whereas once it was “Germans for Germany” it is now Europe (& Colonial Territories!) for those of any European descent (except Roma….). This is probably manifest in the number of countries that were victims of the Nazi terror, and yet harbour their own far Right that not only is tolerated, but in some instances hold power at a local government level at the very least, if not more.

Maybe part of the problem is that a number of modern/pagan occult communities are themselves unsure on how to engage and network ‘outside’ of Eurocentric grounds & context (I have always wondered why Hindu communities are not taken up as the obviously interfaith ally?)

Nick I banned some of similar trolls from my lodges years in the past, and I am slandered about in internet blogs until even today. Still I think that this was the right action, and I would do it again. But the price is very high. If an occultist is not strong enough to stand his/her own ground and defend the group they are heading by setting borders, then someone else should take the lead. The issue is too important! I think the cause is not over-spiritualism but simply weakness hidden in a suit of ethics

Bullies stealing your lunch money while giving you a fat lip is a problem. although the internet is a virtual world and there aren’t any real wounds. so it doesn’t pay to try to change someone’s views, you can’t. people will never change. it’s like the women that stays with a man that’s bad for her because she’s trying to change him. that’s never going to happen sadly. so the best course of action is to ban them right off the bat.there’s a reason you don’t discuss politics in a non political group. no one wants to hear your political bias, whatever it is. cmon don’t be afraid to stand up to the bully.

Thanks for this blog post. I myself left a Facebook Traditional Witchcraft group this year because of a troll and her fiefdom…while not neo-Nazi per se this coterie was racist as hell especially against African Americans and Native Americans. The shit they said was unbelievable and the moderators there did nothing even after they attacked me directly. So I reported them as a hate group. Still nothing. So I left. I definitely think removing their platform is the way to go. They thrive on the pulpit but if they don’t have a voice….well who cares. Again thanks for this post….we need more of this for sure!

Whoa! Are we saying that Occultists can not be ethnocentric? Ethnocenticism is not the same as ethno-supremacy, nor is fascism always about racal oppression. One is a political system, the other is a larger cultural appreciation-grouping of similar heritages. The Golden dawn are not national socialists per germany 1930’s, though they are ethno-nationalists. And who cares. They are a legitament political party and if an occultist shares those views that should be fine. Though he should be more courteous to others that don’t share his politics as we should be of him.

If we don’t I will have to wonder… Is liberalism the only acceptable political affiliation tolerated in the occult world, now? Should we all wear PC patches on our left arm, marching around on the internet, and laying curses on fascists because they don’t share the same political worldview. How is that not a form of militant bullying in itself.

Banning should be based on behavior, not on beliefs or ideological litmus tests. I have known some perfectly nice Maoists, and I would never think to automatically ban, shun, ostracize, or “drive off the streets” anyone simply because I discovered that they were stupid enough to admire Mao’s flavor of revolutionary leftism.

If someone is obnoxious, disruptive, infantile, etc, then what difference does it make if that person is a card-carrying liberal, or conservative, or whatever? And if someone is well-behaved (or at least reasonably so) what difference does it make what their ideology is?

And it’s not always so clear cut. I know Pagans who, by any objective standard, qualify as full-blown right-wing nuts. I am talking Tea-Party, Open-Carry, Conspiracy-Theorizing, Total Whack-Jobs. But so what? And the Tea Party is actually a lot more potentially dangerous than admirers of Hitler.

First they come for the “fascists”. And the next thing you know anyone who has read John Michell is being shouted down and “chased off the streets”.